Aqara Video Doorbell G4 with Chime, 1080p FHD HomeKit Secure Video Doorbell Camera, 2-Way Audio, Night Vision, Local Face Recognition, Automations, Wireless or Wired, Supports Apple Home, Alexa,Google

I've seen the scathing review left by someone who has owned it for a whole 5 weeks on battery presumably without devices in the Apple ecosystem that make sense for this purchase, like HomePods etc for chimes. so I thought it would be good to give some feedback as someone who knows what they are doing and has owned the device for 18 months and is well invested in the Apple ecosystem and my home network.To counter their points -- If you can't see who is who with this doorbell in day or night mode then you need a bigger screen to view it on or a trip to specsavers, sorry. Looks great on my 4K Apple TV.- Why you would want to use the manufacturers cloud features and HomeKit is beyond me, but yes you won't find any of Aqara's propriety cloud based AI on HomeKit directly. HomeKit itself supports various video detections and 7 day recording with an iCloud plan. Nothing stops you using both at the same time and you can record to the SD card to keep it local as a backup regardless, them claiming you can't is again user error.- The alarm function works perfectly. If you try and remove the device without disabling it, then it will go off. That's user error if you don't disable it prior, even if you think you did you obviously didn't.- The device has survived the UK rain on my uncovered porch for 18 months. What isn't waterproof? Oh wait, they are talking about the video based motion going off during rain. Yes, this happens with any video camera that uses video rather than an actual motion sensor. If you've set it up for alerts on any motion rather than people/packages/animals you are going to have a bad time with notifications. This isn't specific to this doorbell.- The batteries will die fast using 24/7 HKSV recording especially when you've set it up to record the motion of rain. It's a no brainer. Hardwire it in if you're doing 24/7 cloud based recording. Battery power is fine for the SD card recording setup with a bit of care into what you want it to do rather than recording rain and also battery will be massively affected by the below...- The chime has to have good wifi and be close to your doorbell to operate correctly. Using a router provided by BT over the other side of your house with the chime no where near the doorbell will give you a bad time. The manual is very clear on ideal conditions, but some people refuse to invest in their own network infrastructure. It will also cause more battery drain.- 720p stream is there for low quality connections so you can still view it rather than seeing nothing. If you're constantly seeing 720p stream remotely you need to look at your local networks upload and your current connections speed and wifi quality. I have never seen the 720p mode, so again points to the setup of device/local network being a huge problem for the reviewer!

Had a couple of other brands but this came up on Prime day and was an absolute steal. The Aqara app is OK but not much more than that. The hardware, however, is excellent. Good quality video and reliable motion detection. It works like a charm with Apple HomeKit. Using HomeKit does not require the Aqara app to be installed after set-up is complete. It has the advantage that you can use the Apple iCloud to store the video and easily access it on Apple kit.The two-way intercom with callers is a bit flaky and does not work at all well when away from home but aside from that, it’s a good piece of kit.

TLDR - this doorbell literally works only when it feels like it.I should start my review by saying that I have a fairly smart home - Alexa everywhere, Lightwaverf switches, CCTV cameras, cloud enabled heating, in fact the only smart home gadget I didn’t have was a video doorbell. So, after seeing a flood of reviews recently for the Aqara G4 I gave it a try.It’s sadly another classic Chinese tech product, i.e. decent hardware spoiled by unintuitive and flaky software. I really struggle with the Aqara Home app, with its “boards” and “cards” and basic functions buried under several menu layers. When you do drill down to the menu items that actually relate to the doorbell, several basic obvious options just don’t exist. There are options like detection frequency, duration of stay, but with no help file to tell you what these actually do.Apparently Aqara gives you 7 days of cloud storage for free but nowhere is that shown in the Aqara app. I can replay 6 second clips but I have no idea if these are being held on my local SD card or in Aqaras cloud.The alert settings page has a menu title row that I only realised after several days actually scrolls sideways with lots more options! And this row is sited not at the top of the page, but below a mysterious menu called “associated event label” (I still have no idea what that’s for). I used to work for a software company and something this confusing should never have seen the light of day.Clips seem to get recorded at random, and often the Aqara app won’t show any clips less than a few days old.Given the shortcomings of Aqaras software I tried using Apple’s Home app to control and monitor the G4, which is better designed but still far from perfect and often just fails to record anything (just like the Aqara app). Removing and re-adding the doorbell seems to help but isn’t a practical fix. Maybe the fact that this doorbell camera works in Apple Home is the reason why Aqara seems to have made such a half hearted attempt with its own app.I tested the camera for three days indoors in which time the supplied batteries dropped from 100% to 40%. I couldn’t see any way they would last 4 weeks, let alone the claimed 4 months. With 6 AA batteries costing say £3-£5 that’s a fair cost over a year. So, I hardwired mine. Then I heard on various internet forums about the higher incidence of connection issues with hardwired Aqara G4 doorbell cameras, and sure enough the live view in Amazon Alexa no longer works. It worked fine during testing but mysteriously not now. I tried removing the batteries (I’d left them in as backup) but still no Alexa Live View anymore. Everything else does kind of work, so as of today it’s a keeper but I’ll update this review if that changes. (Edit - a few weeks on, and I wish I had returned this when I could). What does annoy me is that I have a bulky oversized doorbell because it’s designed to house 6xAA batteries, which I no longer use.I have found that rebooting the doorbell sometimes makes it work again so I have plugged the Camera unit and chime units into remote controlled sockets that are set to power off and on each night to reset the system. I really shouldn’t have to do that…In summary, my experience so far is that the Aqara G4 doorbell is flaky and untrustworthy. Luckily it still chimes when the button is pressed, so at least I haven’t taken a backward step from my old traditional doorbell…